Braided tape and sleeving has long been manufactured by well known equipment in an endless variety of forms suitable for a multitude of applications. One of the particularly large volume uses for such sleeving is as an appearance and/or protective jacketing for elongated objects including but not limited to conductors, cabling, cordage, rope and as protection for delicate and finished surfaces of articles of manufacture generally during handling and shipping. Such sleeving may be made of filaments of various materials including conductive and nonconductive material, plastics, metals and textiles.
Irrespective of the constituent material and of the particular application or use, users of such sleeving have been confronted with frustrating and unresolved problems attending the assembly of the sleeving over the object to be embraced. This is due to the fact that the sleeving as manufactured, and whether in tape or tubular configuration, is elongated and circumferentially contracted. The assembly of conventional sleeving requires that the user endeavor to hold the advance end of the sleeving axially contracted while at the same time endeavoring to advance the leading end over the object being enshrouded. Any relaxation of the forces tending to contract the tubing allows it to collapse and grip the object. In consequence, the assembly of the sleeving is time and labor intensive as well as vexatious and frustrating.
The only relevant prior braided sleeving known to me having entrapped warp filaments is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. to Huppert 2,114,274 and concerns a hairdressing accessory in the form of a foundation or curler for dressing hair. The sleeving there proposed has a braided main body woven about a plurality of elastic filaments maintained under tension during the braiding process. Thereafter the elastic tension stored in the elastomeric filaments acts to hold the sleeving resiliently expanded as a foundation for use in hairdressing operations. In use, the warp filaments of Huppert maintain the sleeving expanded and against contraction girthwise and axially. These permanently present structural and functional characteristics are essential to its intended mode of use.